San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom excepts a plaque honoring San Francisco's hospitality to Cunard's newest luxury liner, the Queen Victoria, on Wednesday January 27, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif. The 11 deck ship, here for a one-day-only visit, has over 1,000 stateroom, a Royal Theater, a grand ballroom, and restaurants galore.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom excepts a plaque honoring San...

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Passengers and visitors walk through the multi tiered Grand Lobby of Cunard's newest luxury liner, the Queen Victoria, which docked at pier 35 for a one-day-only visit on Wednesday January 27, 2010 in San Francisco, Calif. The ship, which has over 1,000 staterooms, a Royal Theater, a grand ballroom, and restaurants galore, is starting the first segment of its World Voyage and will be heading to Hawaii for the next leg of its trip.

He's out of the governor's race, but a new poll puts San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsomas the instant front-runner in a three-way Democratic match-up for lieutenant governor.

The poll of 600 likely Democratic voters statewide, conducted last month by San Francisco pollster Ben Tulchin, shows Newsom clocking in with 33 percent of the vote, giving him a big lead over Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, at 17 percent, and state Sen. Dean Florezof Shafter (Kern County), at 15 percent. Both Hahn and Florez are declared candidates for the June primary.

The remaining 35 percent of those surveyed were undecided.

"In a multi-candidate race, Gavin is extremely well positioned to win," said Tulchin, a Newsom ally who paid for the poll.

Newsom abandoned his yearlong quest for governor two months ago, leaving his once-promising political career in doubt. His unsuccessful campaign, however, did boost his name identification with Democratic voters, a key to winning any down-ballot primary race in which there is limited money for TV ads.

As recently as last month, Newsom shot down the idea of running for the largely ceremonial No. 2 spot. But on Monday, during a meeting with The Chronicle's editorial board, the mayor made it clear he hadn't lost his political ambition, saying, "I have a great deal to offer."

And with the clock ticking down - both on the March 12 deadline for entering the primary and on his term as mayor, which is up in January 2012 - Newsom said he was acutely aware he doesn't have much time to decide.

By the way, if Newsom does run, the race could be a doozy. Hahn's chief campaign strategist is Garry South, the take-no-prisoners consultant who ran Newsom's gubernatorial campaign.

"Some decisions are political - this one was about family," Speier said Tuesday. "We had a sit-down Sunday night, went over all the pluses and minuses of me running. Then my son and daughter poked holes in all the pluses" - the biggest being the notion that being attorney general would allow her to spend more time at home.

The Hillsborough Democrat's interest in returning to Sacramento, where she spent nearly 20 years in the Legislature, had been prompted by a recent poll by J. Moore Methods that showed her with a sizable lead over Democrats already in the attorney general's race.

The other campaigns downplayed the numbers, and the survey showed that most voters were undecided. But it was generally agreed that a Speier candidacy would have spelled trouble for San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, the only woman in the race so far.

San Francisco political consultant Jim Stearns, who is working on Harris' campaign, said Speier wouldn't have been guaranteed a victory in November even if she had won the Democratic primary.

"People have been running for a year and a half," Stearns said. "It takes a lot of work to put that campaign together, to build coalitions and to do fundraising."

Speier spent most of the past week in the Bay Area and in Sacramento, meeting with supporters and consultants to evaluate whether she should run.

The fact that she was here rather than in Washington when President Obamagave his State of the Union address Jan. 27 was seen by insiders as a sign that she was serious about running. It also reinforced the perception that she was not happy with her rookie status in Washington.

Murphy's law: In terms of political stupidity, one would be hard-pressed to beat MegWhitman strategist Mike Murphy's e-mail trying to push rival Republican Steve Poizner out of the governor's race.

Not only did Murphy commit the cardinal sin of putting in writing the threat to pound Poizner into the pavement with a $40 million negative campaign - he apparently forgot who it was he was sending it to.

Murphy - who was the brains behind both Gov. ArnoldSchwarzenegger's recall election and his subsequent "reform" ballot debacle - sent the e-mail to his "old friend," Poizner pollster Jan van Lohuizen.

Sources in the Poizner campaign, however, tell us that van Lohuizen is anything but an "old friend" of Murphy's. In fact, van Lohuizen believes that Murphy tried to force him out when the two worked on Arnold's recall campaign.

In any case, when the e-mail arrived in his mailbox last week, van Lohuizen immediately forwarded it to Poizner campaign manager Jim Bognet, who spent the next five days cooking up a very public response.